time-travel

The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there

– L.P. Hartley

We often stare fondly into The Past, wishing we were still there. People. Places. Experiences. Things, we may never fully have appreciated at the time, call to us. Especially when Now is not easy or comfortable.

Sometimes we physically travel back to where we once lived, visiting people and places that we knew. Sometimes it’s like comfy slippers, easy and fun. We feel wrapped up by those we love, who love us back. But we can also discover that we no longer fit there, no longer just slot back in. We feel awkward and out of touch. We wonder how we once fitted in at all.

People change or move on; places develop, expand or contract. That geography of The Past warps into different shapes.

And of course, we have changed. We have grown, developed, expanded or contracted. WE have lived life, in a different space. Sometimes those paths have just deviated from each other. The old ships that passed in the night. We inhabited a certain time and space, and the people we were then, aligned, for a brief time.

Occasionally we may find ourselves in amongst a group of people we were once in daily contact with. Workmates, friends, whanau… And we arrive to find the space we once slotted into and occupies has moved or changed. It might chafe a little; we may feel like ghosts of times past. No longer knowing the in language of our friends. The secret 2^nd language that familiarity brings is beyond us.

We often romanticise The Past. We remember The Past fondly. Time has a knack of rubbing off the rough edges. I think our minds protect us by forgetting some of the awkwardness or misaligning.

And of course some of our pasts have events and people that we should forget. Trauma, abuse unacknowledged pain all are bits of our pasts that we should only revisit when it is safe to do so. Sometimes it is the healthiest thing to do, to never go back. To cut people and places out of our lives and to continue to just keep healing and moving forward.

Sometimes though, no matter what the length of time and distance, we find people who continue to Fit. People whose lives, even when they deviate off in another direction, still slide back into place, when we meet again. Those are the lights of our lives. They are the souls that we will always carry with us. Time and distance never sever the connection – it only reiterates the links. They are our taonga, our precious treasures

We should remember that The Past is the past. Sometimes only useful for reminding us of how far we’ve come. Those people, places and events may have helped form us, but they do not define us. They should have no hold over us. A sense of obligation is sometimes a very harmful thing to fulfil.

If we need to return to people and places we have left, and we find we longer just slot in, then that’s ok. We can just remind ourselves that nothing is static. We are not the person we were when we lived there. Everything moves like those old kaleidoscopes. All those pretty coloured chips slowly moving and sorting. Never in the same configuration twice.

Spend the time. Meet the ghosts. Maybe resolve old wounds.

Accept that you have grown and that’s why it no longer feels comfortable.

And then Look Forward.

Make new paths. Find new connections. And only take those you need with you as you travel. When we put The Past behind us, we can travel lighter, stronger and better…..

Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi.
The old net is cast aside, while the new net goes a-catching.